Generally described, computing devices utilize a communication network, or a series of communication networks, to exchange data. Companies and organizations operate computer networks that interconnect a number of computing devices to support operations or provide services to third parties. The computing systems can be located in a single geographic location or located in multiple, distinct geographic locations (e.g., interconnected via private or public communication networks). Specifically, data centers or data processing centers, herein generally referred to as a “data center,” may include a number of interconnected computing systems to provide computing resources to users of the data center. The data centers may be private data centers operated on behalf of an organization or public data centers operated on behalf, or for the benefit of, the general public.
To facilitate increased utilization of data center resources, virtualization technologies may allow a single physical computing device to host one or more instances of virtual machines that appear and operate as independent computing devices to users of a data center. With virtualization, the single physical computing device can create, maintain, delete, or otherwise manage virtual machines in a dynamic matter. In turn, users can request computer resources from a data center, including single computing devices or a configuration of networked computing devices, and be provided with varying numbers of virtual machine resources.
In some scenarios, virtual machine instances may be configured according to a number of virtual machine instance types to provide specific functionality. For example, a virtual machine instance may be associated with different combinations of operating systems or operating system configurations, virtualized hardware resources, and software applications or software application configurations to enable the virtual machine instance to provide different desired functionalities, or to provide similar functionalities more efficiently. For example, a data center may offer customers virtual machine instance types corresponding to database servers, web servers, networking devices, and the like. In more complex embodiments, data centers can further offer hosted virtual machine or hosted computing device networks including a number of interconnected computing devices (including physical computing devices or virtual machine instances).
In order to assist customer with the design and deployment of hosted networks, data centers can provide modeling tools that can describe aspects of a hosted network in accordance with the data center's best practices. For example, a customer may be presented with a graphical interface that allows the selection of various computing device components to be included in a hosted network and suggests appropriate configurations or interconnections for the selected computing device components. However, such design tools do not provide guidance in terms of modifications to a hosted network. Accordingly, performance of a hosted network may erode over time.